Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray is determined to sustain the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition and is trying to convince Congress and NCP leaders that future battles can be easily won if they stick together.
While the Congress and NCP leaders who have met Uddhav over the past two days have assured him of continuing with the alliance primarily because of the sense of hurt caused by the Eknath Shinde group’s betrayal, they are in favour of sustaining the coalition even on the basis of dispassionate political analysis.
The Congress-NCP leadership is also sympathetic towards Uddhav as he valiantly resisted the pressure to return to the BJP’s embrace even as he was accused of ideological perfidy.
While NCP chief Sharad Pawar met Uddhav during the crisis to reassure him of a joint fight, Congress president Sonia Gandhi called up the Sena chief to express solidarity and pledge unremitting support.
Uddhav is grappling with the worst crisis of his life as the Shinde group tries to snatch the Shiv Sena from him. The Mumbai municipal corporation election, due in a couple of months, is another critical battle that will decide the Sena’s future and the Thackerays wouldn’t like to lose the support of Sonia and Pawar at this stage.
At a meeting of Congress MLAs in Mumbai on Thursday morning, it was decided that protecting the party’s turf should be the main agenda because the BJP could unleash a massive poaching drive after returning to power with the Sena rebels.
A senior Congress leader told The Telegraph over phone from Mumbai: “We do have some leaders who believe there is no point in continuing with the alliance as the scope for consolidation gets restricted. A weakened Shiv Sena opens up new opportunities for the Congress-NCP. But the dominant view is in favour of persisting with the coalition.”
Congress-NCP leaders also feel that the new government will be unstable and weak and its challenges enormous.
“If there were no uncertainties, the BJP wouldn’t have allowed Shinde to become chief minister. We know how ambitious Devendra Fadnavis is and how desperately he was working to become chief minister. But the BJP high command might have seen the obstacles and chosen to step back. By doing so, they have also diluted the perception of being power-hungry. Through Shinde as chief minister, it will be easier for them to lure away Sena cadres,” another Congress leader said.
In Delhi, Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh said: “Through the naked display of money and muscle power, the BJP has undemocratically and unethically captured yet another state government. Under the Modi-Shah duo, the BJP wants to capture power at any cost, either directly or through remote control. What happened in Maharashtra is shameful for Indian democracy.”
He alleged the BJP was obsessed with capturing power rather than serving the people.
Ramesh said: “The offices of the governors and Speakers, and agencies like the ED and the CBI, are openly misused. Buying MLAs has become so commonplace that the finance minister blurted out the truth today when she suggested imposition of GST on ‘horse-trading’,” the Congress leader said, referring to Nirmala Sitharaman’s faux pas while mentioning horse racing.
“The BJP can go to any extent to win elections — from misuse of money power to polarisation and violence. Despite using all these tactics, if the voters reject them, then they start hatching conspiracies to topple elected governments,” Ramesh said.
He recalled alleged machinations against elected governments in Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Puducherry, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, saying: “They engineer defections by MLAs even to win Rajya Sabha elections.”
On Maharashtra, Ramesh said: “First, in November 2019, Devendra Fadnavis took oath along with 10 defected NCP MLAs at midnight, but then had to step down unceremoniously. This is not only an attack on democracy, this is also an insult of the people who voted against the BJP.”
